I wonder sometimes what the ancient Greeks might have watched if they invented Television to go with their aqueducts and roads and whatever else they've invented which I've forgotten since high school history class. The more I think about it the more I'm sure they would have watched the same things we watch now, which is to say cops, doctors, and lawyers. We love those guys! We tell our kids to be those guys! We elect those people into higher political office. Those 3 jobs represent, and have always represented, the best that society has to offer. But why? Why do we love them so much? And why do we keep giving them television shows? (And also, as a point of personal peeve, they're all the same! Why do we need so many identical shows?)

Anyways, I think it must have something to do with altruism. Those three professions are the pinnacle of responsibility and represent a degree of morality that most of us don't have. And isn't TV all about fantasy? We throw ourselves into the protagonists we see and don't even have to envision what our life would like be as someone else, because the shows do it for us already. So doesn't it make sense that we'd want to watch the people we most respect? Cops risk their lives to protect ours, doctors save them, and lawyers protect our rights. 

But there is another side of it that makes us watch those shows. We like the downfall. We love the tortured altruistics. We love it when doctors are addicts, cops beat their wives, and lawyers break the law. We love crushing archetypes with a hammer because to some extent we don't like the idea that we can be placed into a category. We scrutinize cops, doctors, and lawyers so tightly because we don't think they are as good as their job. It's funny, because we do every once in awhile find the person who really is the epitome of the archetypal role. And if we didn't scrutinize all the others and eliminated them from whatever category we placed them in, the truly good ones would fall to the wayside. It's good that we humanize the people who fill these roles (I mean the real ones not the ones on TV) because when we actually do find one who fits the bill for perfection, they inspire the rest of us to do good. 

As far into the future as I can foresee there will be parents telling their kids to be doctors, and I wouldn't have it any other way. The best doctors and the best lawyers and the best cops are the ideal archetypal imaginings of children. In the dreams of a kid he only ever wants to be the best doctor out there, saving the world one surgery at a time. Archetypes are real. They are the standards we aim to reach in our lives. The television depictions of false heroes can make us more cynical about real cop work out there, but they can also serve to impress upon us just how difficult it is to fully meet that ideal standard. So when you see a really good doctor, a truly inspiring lawyer, and a courageous police officer, thank them, because it's not easy holding onto a dreamer's morality.